In 1998, as Joey and Dawson shared their first kiss and Felicity agonized over Ben and Noel, poor Buffy Summers murdered the love of her life. Watching that episode some 15 years later, as a woman well into my 30s, I cried bitter tears. As Buffy made out with her ex-boyfriend, stabbed him in the stomach, and looked on in horror as he got sucked into Hell, it struck me as the most harrowing and realistic breakup in television history, the whole idea that anyone would ever fall for a big lunk like Angel notwithstanding.

The motivation for their split, of course, was to prevent worldwide human annihilation. Those were the stakes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which rightfully portrayed the process of growing up as a series of encounters with total fucking apocalypse. Because it perfectly captured the histrionic milieu of high school—and because it was on the WB network—people tend to talk about Buffy as a coming-of-age story. But the show’s real artistic achievement was in its flat rejection of the notion we can ever come to know ourselves, much less someone else.

Unlike most teen dramas, Buffy wasn’t a narrative about finding an identity; it was always about having a lot of them. Okay, sure, Season 1, with its mean girls and first dates and cheerleading tryouts, was a straightforward dramatization of the trials of young adulthood. (No social problem was ever so great that it couldn’t be fixed, however improbably, by killing some vampires.) But as the show progressed, and the Scoobies coped variously with sordid pasts, spells gone wrong, and a horrifying spectrum of abusive boyfriends, its moral universe grew more complex. Identities and alliances shifted and relationships grew ever more muddled as evil—no longer relegated to the Big Bad in the basement—was embodied by familiar faces.

On Felicity, “a new version of you” meant that you got a haircut or switched majors. On Buffy, it usually meant that you were operating under the influence of a malevolent spirit, spell, curse, or hypnotic trance. Frequently, characters were demonically possessed, supernaturally compelled, or otherwise not themselves. Doubles abounded: Angel and his alter ego Angelus, Buffy and her “dark mirror” Faith, Willow and her murderous “kinda gay” doppelgänger, Buffy and the Buffybot, the two Xanders. Life on the Hellmouth required a certain amount of flexibility. You might, for instance, spend 19 years of your life as an only child, only to one day find you have an annoying little sister that monks made out of mystical energy. At any given moment, you might turn into a rat, a demon, a werewolf, or a lesbian. In Sunnydale, no one was ever what they seemed, and by the time you’d figured someone out, they had already turned into someone else.

The problem of identity came to a head in Season 4, when (not for nothing) the Big Bad was an existential Frankenstein figure named Adam. One by one, the central characters went through their own identity crisis. Having been stripped of his station as a Watcher and a librarian, poor Giles played sad guitar at open mic nights. Buffy, in a bid to redefine herself after killing Angel, slept with a womanizer whose bad behavior she couldn’t redress with a sword to the stomach. Oz boffed some werewolf on accident. (Then, whoops! He killed her.) Willow found herself in a delightful, witchy same-sex relationship, Spike started helping the good guys, Xander switched jobs every week, and Anya tried to adjust to life as a human after hundreds of years as a vengeance demon. While remaining a tight-knit group, the Scoobies continually surprised themselves—and each other—with their capacity for change.

As a culture, we place a lot of emphasis on the coming-of-age story, as though it’s something that happens just once, early in life. The series finales of teen dramas tend to perpetuate that myth by suggesting that we emerge into adulthood somewhat inexperienced, but more or less fully formed. How many series end with the female lead finally (“finally”) locking down her soul mate? In 2002-2003, during Buffy’s seventh and final season, both Dawson’s Creek and Felicity fast-forwarded into the future to assure us that Joey ended up with Pacey and Felicity ended up with Ben. Meanwhile, in her finale, Buffy lost not one but two boyfriends and also saved the world, no big. Like most of the show’s episodes, which eschewed cliffhangers or closure in favor of stopping on a quiet, awkward beat, the series ended on a moment of silence as our heroine was asked to contemplate her future. What would Buffy do next? Even she didn’t know.

Over its long (and admittedly uneven) run, the show itself played with the notion of identity. The magic of Buffy was not just in combining influences as diverse as John Hughes, classic horror, Broadway, and comic books, but also in its ability to dip into straight genre—as in episodes like “Hush” and “Once More, With Feeling”—and still seem utterly like itself. Joss Whedon is known as (among other things) a champion of nerd culture, but his biggest contribution has been in demonstrating that teen drama (one of the most maligned of all genres) was sophisticated and capacious enough to accommodate rigorous emotional honesty, offbeat humor, and instantaneous shifts in tone.

Coming-of-age stories tend to portray young adulthood as a time when we “find ourselves,” whatever that means. But that model ignores the fact that, for better or worse, the very stuff of our selves—our personalities, our preferences, and even our core values—has a remarkable capacity for change. Our task is to make sure that some semblance of self stays intact as we age. It’s hard because we tend to renounce our Past Selves (those haircuts!), and we have a hard time envisioning our Future Selves at all. In real life, this proliferation of selves can cause continuity problems. (Certainly I don’t recognize the Me who once owned a pink pleather skirt.) On Buffy, despite the limitations of its 45-minute format, the characters juggled multiple versions of themselves all the time, constantly grappling with the contradictions, anxiety, and consequences surrounding who they had been, who they were, and who they would become in a surprisingly cogent way.

After floundering for a time, most of Buffy’s contemporaries (Felicity, Rory from Gilmore Girls) found themselves by the time they graduated college. However much I loved those shows, their journeys did not speak to me. The life of a vampire slayer—gritty and exhausting, with bouts of immaturity, ill-advised romantic entanglements, and the occasional need to kill an evil bug—is the one that I actually recognize, the one that maps onto some semblance of life. It’s a model that makes just as much sense when you’re 15 as when you’re 35, because who ever actually figures it out, really?

The thing is, Buffy was never about a girl coming of age. In her universe, as in ours, no one ever finds herself, at least not for long. With its relentless parade of Big Bads, demonic possessions, and fug leather pants, Buffy shows us how to face life’s central challenge: accepting the monsters we have all had to be, and those we have yet to become.

It was a religion in my house. And I did like the way it was fairly realistic about how people never really figured themselves out because they were always changing. Change doesn't stop at 21 or 22. You keep doing it, all your life, which has been a surprise to me.

Oh, this is beautiful. Buffy was my jam, and I was always just a year behind her in milestones — I graduated the year after her, I experienced my first year of college a year after her, I even had some just-about-a-year-after-her breakups (coincidence, I swear). I always loved that last shot of her in "Chosen," just a quiet moment of silence as she slowly gave a small, contented smile. I always figured the show was this overall arc of her trying to figure out a "normal" life, whatever her definition of "normal" was — and the finale, the prospect of not being the one girl in all the world anymore, gave her the hope that she had found her own "normal." Every time I think of the final shot of her, I also think back to that rant she had at Joyce at the end of season 2 — "or god, even studying!" — It all just had this great feel to me, that the message of the show wasn't just a coming of age or a "how to traverse teen life," it was a "how to figure out what your personal version of normal is, and how to go about maybe getting there on your own terms." Such a fantastic show. I could go on forever. Grr, argh!

Ooooh, yes. The notion of "normal" (and the flat impossibility, for many of us, of achieving and maintaining something that looks like normalcy) is a big often-unspoken theme in "BtVS." What is normal? Is it just that to which we're accustomed? How do we distinguish between what is merely abnormal and what is evil? And if those lines are so permeable, what can we be certain of?

Normal is a big deal in Buffy's life. It cannot be accidental that the season 6 episode that questions the entire existence of the Buffyverse is titled "Normal Again."

chnellociraptor

That moment when Joyce asks Buffy if she's ever tried not being the Slayer — so perfect, so stunningly relatable.

Ahhhhh, I want to climb into this essay like a pair of yummy sushi pajamas.

anxious_mofo

Once I ate a fortune cookie and the "fortune" inside was thus: "Love not only who you are, but also who you may become." I really liked that Buffy got to college and that…didn't work out. That she shuffled from job to job, that she had no one true love (arguably). That there didn't seem to be an Answer to all her problems–doing badly in school, trying not to die, saving the world again and again, seriously world get it together, flubbing relationships, trying to be a good sister.

All told, Buffy's journey and this piece remind me of that part in Anne of the Island where Anne talks to Aunt Jamesina about how her character was supposed to have been formed by the time she was twenty, but she felt it was still full of flaws, and Aunt Jimsie assures her that her own character is cracked in a hundred places.

emily_white

My heart just grew three sizes–any website where Buffy and the later Anne books can get discussed in the same comment is truly my Internet Home.

anxious_mofo

Come, let us drink a Beverage and discuss found families in Sunnydale and Avonlea!

(and beyond because found families are the greatest)

(there are probably other similarities between Buffy and Anne that will come to me on the bus this afternoon)

emily_white

I, um, may have once written a paper about intentional motherhood and found families in LMM. That literally no one in the world has ever found remotely interesting.

God, I love this place.

Es_Petal

I'd find it interesting!

anxious_mofo

I am intensely interested in this paper.

HomestarRunner

I would read that piece and comment obsessively. Plz submit to Mallory and Nicole!

Linette

This is the right place for my other favorite Aunt Jimsie quote.

"She isn't like any of the girls I ever knew, or any of the girls I was myself."

"How many girls were you, Aunt Jimsie?"

"About half a dozen, my dear."

Also relevant to Buffy, I feel. She was a lot of girls. Some of them were Faith.

Michelle

<3 Buffy, nothing compares (except maybe Veronica Mars)

Also shoutouts to the end of Gilmore Girls which had Rory reject a marriage proposal and instead run off to be a reporter on the Obama campaign trail!

bgprincipessa

But those last 2 seasons. So painful.

p0nymalta

Yeah totally awful, can't believe they had Lane get pregnant with twins after having sex once (and then forsaking it forever) which was basically ripped from the 7th Heaven playbook gah.

icebergmama

BUFFY. I didn't get into Buffy until much, much later, when Mr. Iceberg started buying it by the series on DVD and got me to watch from the beginning (when it started airing it was on too late for TV in our house). I can't get into things unless I watch them from the first episode. But I did enjoy it, and I think this essay is great. I'm still trying to figure out who the fuck I am, because not even being a mum has magically transformed me into a grown up, let alone a capable one.

fondue with cheddar

I have to watch stuff from the beginning too, which is why I never watched it. When the series started I lived on my own and couldn't afford cable, and I lived in a basement apartment so I couldn't get good reception with rabbit ears. One of these days I will watch it!

roxythroatpunch

You will! And people will tell you to skip season one, but please don't. It's silly, but so charming, and so important to the rest of the series.

fondue with cheddar

I would never. You're talking to a person who won't watch a movie if she misses the first five minutes. And besides, what's not to love about silly and charming?

rebeccakp

Oh, this is when I wish this site were a big, comfy living room with soft couches and guacamole and beers, and we could all talk for hours about Buffy and what the show means to us!

I'm 35, and as I get older, I find Buffy more and more appealing and relatable, because, as Kim said, the show is about the many versions of yourself, and the way in which enormous life changes split you up, multiply you, and complicate your identity. It's not a teen show…it's a show that pays off as you get decades further from high school and you discover new versions of yourself as your life becomes unrecognizable, with every new job, city, relationship, child, illness, death, etc.

Amy

Yes! I was 26 when BtVS started. I loved it. In your twenties you are still so close to teenage-hood and high school that you relate to the show on that level. I stopped watching the show sometime in season 4. My son was 2 and we couldn't watch it with him there-too scary. I caught an episode here and there, but didn't watch the entire series until last year. I understand the show so much better now, far removed from that earlier age. Instead of just a fun show to watch, I can see so many themes and even philosophies and ethical issues that I never picked up on before.

Did anyone else spend their early (earlier?) online years on the Bronze boards? That place was the greatest.

bastardsnow

I have rarely seen the appeal and successes of the show quite so well laid out. Wonderful article.

I didn't get into Buffy until it was almost over, but I feel like that worked well for me because a lot of the themes it delved into weren't super relevant to me until after high school, and I quite happily spent my early 20's steeped in Buffy fandom and fanfiction (though I'm happy to say I never got caught up in the shipper wars). The Body was cathartic for me when my grandmother was dying, the end of Season 6 was revelatory when I was figuring out my real friendships and what they meant to me.

mittenstheboar

This is so well written. And true. Thank you

blushingflower

The thing that always struck me about the Angel/Buffy relationship (do I need a spoiler alert for something that aired over 10 years ago?) is how he *literally* turns evil after they have sex, and how that was a metaphor for the ways in which many young women often feel once they've given into the pressure to have sex. The guy who doesn't call anymore, etc. But yeah, I definitely shed some adolescent tears when she stabbed him, and I probably will again when I re-watch that episode with my gentleman friend (I am trying to get him to watch the whole show, but it is a bit uneven and he is not as enthusiastic in his appreciation as my inner 16-year-old thinks one ought to be).
The story arc that always hits me right in the gut though is "The Body" and Anya's speech about how stupid death is. Also "Gingerbread" is TERRIFYING, because it's not about monsters, it's about our human capacity for monstrous behavior.

Buffy, man, I could right about that show for days.

roxythroatpunch

I got my now-husband to watch the whole thing from the beginning when we were in the early stages of dating. He was restless during season one, but got hooked somewhere in the first third of season two, and then we barrelled through the rest in, like, months. I hope he hangs in there!

Amy

You are absolutely right. Angel turning into Angelus is the perfect metaphor for the guy that changes and/or disappears once a girl gives it up. It wasn't until Riley that Buffy had a positive sexual experience.

BUFFY! Oh, this essay is just wonderful. I struggled a lot with feeling like an outsider in high school for a variety of reasons beyond the typical high school angst and Buffy was my safe space where everybody was an outsider so there was no real "inside" to be excluded from. And they were funny!

My family still jokes about my "Buffy Rules" which primarily consisted of no talking without getting a MASSIVE eyeroll and me pointedly pausing the show and saying, "…yes?" I was a teenage dictator, yes I was.

Haha I also had "Buffy Rules," in that if someone called for me while Buffy or Angel was on, I would not take the call and please take a message, and if someone talked to me during the actual show I would glare daggers and be cranky.

mittenstheboar

I still do this with mysteries, because come on!! Clues are being revealed!

lemonadefish

I <3 Buffy, and essays about Buffy. More please!

thebrender

This article: crushed it. Thank you so much for writing this, and writing it well. I feel better knowing this article exists.

robotosaur

I am currently watching Buffy for the FIRST TIME, you guys! I am 27! How did this happen!

We just watched The Body on Monday and I am still a disaster. It is the #3 fictional thing that has turned me into a sobbing wreck. (#1 is Pan's Labyrinth, #2 is the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are.)

Oof, "The Body"! I watched it for the first time a few weeks after my father died. I can't be objective about the episode because, whenever I've rewatched it, there's always a part of me split off from the rest, on her knees on the carpet, wordlessly keening.

[eta: wow, that came out… dramatically. But the episode hit me hard and fast enough to disarm all my defensive NO THANK YOU I AM DOING FINE circuitry and reduce me to pure grief. It was valuable.]

Sorta-kinda related to Pan's Labyrinth, I rewatched The Orphanage last night. Even knowing what was coming, I jumped right out of my seat several times, and by the end, The Fella and I were both weeping quietly. Such a lovely, scary, heartfelt film.

msjinxie

Girl, I made it to THIRTY before watching it! I'm still not sure how that happened, it was/is totally in my wheelhouse.

roxythroatpunch

Where the Wild Things Are just totally destroyed me. I've never really been able to put my finger on why, beyond just how raw it felt. But God. I haven't been able to rewatch it, even though we own it and I want to. Kind of.

I just finished Buffy for the first time yesterday. I am watching Angel now. I really didn't want it to be over and now I'm having withdrawals.

rallisaurus

I refused to watch the show when I was in middle school because one of my friends wouldn't stop gushing about David Boreanaz. I watched 7th Heaven instead. Oh how I wish I could take back those middle school years. I mean, we do remember that's where Jessica Biel came from, right?

But I got into Buffy during it's final season and watched reruns (RERUNS!) to catch up. It's definitely something that had to grow on me. Though my husband's fandom puts me to shame. But he comments here too, so I'll let him speak for himself, if he wants.

bastardsnow

<3

laurel

Buffy the Vampire Slayer or, What's It Like to Be the Final Girl After the Big Bad is Dead? (There are Other Big Bads, Endlessly, Forever)

Megano!

But, aren't coming of age stories at their heart about figuring out your identity? That is at least what high school is like in real life — I tried on so many hats, trying to find my place. They didn't all go great.

ms_whatwhat

this is perfect. I had such a crush on Oz, that beautiful monosyllabic animal of a teenage boy. also on Spike. and Angel. and Faith. and Tara.

ms_whatwhat

btw, is this where I get to vent about Spike trying to rape Buffy? Completely out of character, no? I mean sure he tortured and killed and drank peoples blood but still, Spike would not try to rape Buffy. That and entirety of the episode 'beer bad' are my only two complaints.

This was a fantastic essay. Thank you.
I rewatch Buffy all the time. Do I need to clean my floors? Put an episode of Buffy on! Baking? Buffy time! I am 38 years old.

Also, I can't get enough of the whole shtick with Spike and Blooming Onions. It was little details like that– which pop up again, seasons later– which to made the characters so multidimensional and also reward repeated viewing.

I actually ate a Blooming Onion at a county fair because of Spike and his praises of them. It did not live up to the hype. But then I made my partner buy a Blooming Onion cutting device so that we could make our own. It has yet to be attempted.

This was a delight, thank you so much for it. I think I shall watch some Buffy tonight. The problem is, I can never watch just one episode in the middle. If I want to watch Buffy, I feel the need to watch THE WHOLE THING ALL OF IT REWATCH TIME. It's like heroin, a little.

Loved this essay. I'm 36 and I discovered Buffy just this year! It's amazing, and definitely not a typical teen drama. Actually I don't think I would have appreciated Buffy if I'd watched it when it aired, so I'm lucky that the show came into my life a little later.

Briony Fields

I have to say, this essay and the comments have been hugely helpful for me. That struggle get it together, figure out who you are, and the realization that I am now 30 and still a mess here and there has been so hard for me to accept! I've always felt so alone with that and so envious of everyone else and their clear direction and organized lives, or so it seemed…it's really only the last year or two that I've begun to understand how normal my life is, and that everyone else is going through the same thing. This has helped immensely. Thanks, toasties!

"You think you know. What you are. What's to come.
You haven't even begun"

R. Johnston

"The life of a vampire slayer—gritty and exhausting, with bouts of immaturity, ill-advised romantic entanglements, and the occasional need to kill an evil bug—is the one that I actually recognize, the one that maps onto some semblance of life. "

Whenever people find out that I'm a Buffy fan and ask me what I like about the show the first thing I tell them is that it offers by far and away the most realistic portrayal on t.v. or in the movies of life as a bright teenager/young adult. It's an answer that, in my experience, tends to mystify people who haven't followed the show and that makes perfect sense to anyone who's a fan.

This article along with hers has convinced me to finallllllly watch Buffy.

Paige

To a Buffy fan, hearing someone say they're gonna start watching Buffy is virtually the equivalent to a sinner telling a Christian they've turned their life over to Christ. It makes us indescribably happy and excited. This is truly a life changing series, and it's a change for the better. Thanks for making my morning complete stranger! :) I hope you enjoy it much as myself and the other commentators here did.

If I may offer you a word of friendly advice…stay. away. from. THE INTERNET. One of the best things about Buffy is that there are constant surprises and plot-twists and the internet is flooded with spoilers! Avoid typing anything Buffy related into Google or YouTube. I know it's tempting, but just. say. NO. Okay I'm done with the PSA…have fun!! :)

summercampbitch

Hey Paige! Noted.

And your PSA/enthusiasm for a stranger's Buffy journey has made my morning. So our relationship has now progressed to one of mutual morning-making.

If I may offer some unsolicited advice? The first season is… "uneven" would be a kind way of putting it. I suggest starting with S1 so you can see the characters and mythology established, but hang in there until S2, when I felt it evened out quite a lot.

A few years ago, a friend viewing "Buffy" for the first time suggested a monthly viewing party: we'd get together for dinner and drinks and conversation and watch a few episodes. It really helped shepherd her through the bumpy first-season blues to a point where she was enjoying the show on its own merits, not just as a cheesy background to an evening of comradery.

Just a heads-up for anyone still reading: we're having a discussion of this link and other Buffy tangents over at Metafilter.

Edith

I stumbled upon this blog and am so delighted that even now, people are discovering BtVS! I first watched this show after a romantic break up, and Buffy got me through it. I laughed, I cried, and I hung on to the edge of my seat throughout.
This show is multi-layered; it's "onion-y"; there's so much sub text that 100's of academic papers have been written about it.
All hail Joss for creating this delight that stands the test of time.
I'm so pleased to read all of the comments here – keep sharing Buffy!

sammi

That was without a doubt the single best commentary on WHY Buffy worked than ANYTHING I have EVER read! As a writer I am forever trying to figure out why something worked and I found the Buffy reruns in my early 30s when I had a new baby that would wake me up at 5 and go back to sleep at 8 leaving me with nothing to do every morning when they showed the episodes in order every day all week. I admittedly cried like a schoolgirl at the appropriate places. And THANK GOD I also wasn't the only one who wasn't as taken by Angel as most.(Maybe you DID have to be a teen for that one!)You explained it all perfectly!